This invention relates generally to social networking systems, and more particularly to suggesting connections and/or interactions to users or objects within a social networking system.
Users of social networking services may form connections, associations, or other relationships with other users based on real-life interactions, online interactions, or a mixture of both. For example, users may choose to connect with others who may be from the same geographic location, travel in the same circle of friends, or may have attended the same college or university. Once connected within the social networking system, users may preferentially interact with their connections by messaging each other, posting content about each other, playing interactive games with each other etc. Social networking systems value user connections because better connected users tend to use the social networking system more, thus increasing user engagement and providing a better user experience. Accordingly, it is generally desirable that users have many connections within the social networking system.
Although it is beneficial to have users with many connections within the social networking system, it may be difficult for users of a social networking system to locate other users with whom they may wish to form a connection. Social networking systems generally provide a way for users to find such connections. However, many of these methods are time and labor intensive. For example, a user may be required to enter the name, email address, instant messaging ID, and other similar data to locate another user within the social networking system. Since such a method of locating connections is time and labor intensive, a user may choose not to form certain connections within the social networking system. Additionally, users may simply forget to locate some connections within the social networking system.
Social networking systems do provide mechanisms for suggesting other users that a particular user may know. In such a system, one or more other users may be suggested as possible connections to a particular user if those other users are in the same social network or otherwise appear likely to be known to the user. For example, if a user is part of a university network, other users, also a part of the university network but not connected with the first user, may be suggested as potential connections for the user. Such a method of suggesting friends may reduce the time and labor associated with locating users within the social networking system, but it may also provide irrelevant suggestions. For example, just because two users are part of a same university network, those users do not necessarily know each other in real life.
Another method of suggesting connections within a social networking system is to determine the number of common connections between two users. For example, if two users have a large number of common connections, the users may be suggested to each other as potential connections. However, such a system may not be any more precise than the other method of suggesting connections because it is not necessary that two users with a same mutual connection know or interact with each other outside the social networking system. Additionally, such a system is biased against suggesting friends to a new user of a social networking system or a user who many not have many connections within the social networking system. For example, if a user only has two connections within the social networking system, the user will at most have two connections in common with a user who has two hundred connections within the social networking system.
Although it is valuable to facilitate connections for users with few connections within the social networking system, a system that suggests connections based on the number of mutual friends will likely make suggestions to those users with many connections within the social networking system when compared to users with few connections within the social networking system. This leads to a sub-optimal result for the social networking system, since an additional friend for a user with many friends is less valuable than an additional friend for a user with relatively few friends. Other suggestion systems similarly focus on simply adding connections among users without regard to the result of the suggested connections. Accordingly, existing mechanisms that suggest new connections to a user based merely on indicators of a likely connection fail to address the value of the resulting connections to the social networking system.